Bloodhound land speed record car gets backing from China

Chinese carmaker Geely Auto has stepped in to save Bloodhound, the cash-strapped British Land Speed Record (LSR) contender. The Chinese manufacturer will become lead sponsor of the 1,000mph record attempt due to make its debut runs and attempt an 800mph LSR record in South Africa next October, returning later to achieve 1,000mph.

The 30-year-old Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (ZGH), which owns Volvo Cars and London Taxi, will back the Bloodhound to the tune of "multiples of millions of pounds", according to a spokesman, also providing chase cars, know-how and funds.

The backing came at the instigation of Geely's chairman Li Shufu, who saw a model of the 7.8-tonne, 13.5-metre-long, record-breaking contender as a K'Nex construction model at a special exhibition at the Coventry Transport Museum.

Mark Chapman, Bloodhound chief engineer, said: "He was opening a new factory in Coventry. He had some time to spare, went to the Transport Museum, saw the model and said 'That looks really cool, we should get involved'."

While Geely will supply technical back-up and much-needed cash to the project, Jaguar will continue to supply its 800bhp 5.0-litre F-type V8, which will run the fuel pumps delivering more than 800 litres of high-test peroxide in just 20 seconds.

The Geely logo joins Jaguar and Rolls-Royce on the Bloodhound's sideCredit:
Stefan Marjoram

Chapman says that while the main part of the design is done, there is valuable input that Geely could give on noise reduction around the cockpit area and also in modelling the natural frequencies of the car against its components, crucial at super high speeds.

"Some of the engineering problems that we have, [Geely] with its engineering resources will be able to help us with immensely," says Chapman.

"We haven't always had the resources to do what we want to do, such as the frequency response of the car. So knowing our wheel-hop frequency of 3Hz, we have kept the chassis frequency away from that at about 20Hz, but we've never been able to do the complete frequency model and Geely should be able to help us have a look at that."

Chapman also says that Geely will open up the education facilities of the project across China and Asia. "It fits with what is already going on," he says. "When we launched the website almost the highest hit rate was across China."

He is also unconcerned about any security aspects of a Chinese involvement in the project, which uses a Ministry of Defence EJ200 military jet engine used in the Euro Fighter Typhoon.

"We do have sensitive intellectual property on the car," he says, "but it doesn't change how we deal with it. Just as we don't let Nammo Group [Norwegian rocket motor maker] access the Euro Fighter data and vice versa, we won't be sharing any data with Geely."

The Bloodhound team has also swapped its hybrid rocket propulsion for a single-fuel deviceCredit:
Stefan Marjoram

The team has also made its second major rocket motor swap of the project, changing from the previously proposed hybrid rocket motor from Nammo in favour of a mono-propellant rocket motor.

Chapman explains: "Ideally we need between 40 and 50 kilo Newtons (kN) of thrust and their current hybrid motor providing thrust on decomposing peroxide provides 30 to 35kN, so that was slightly under what we wanted to be really safe and confident on getting an 800mph record next year.

"Then Nammo asked us how we felt about a mono-propellant motor which uses decomposing steam. As a rule of thumb, for every kilogram of peroxide you pump, you get about a kilo Newton of thrust and we are pumping at about 40kg a second, so we can be fairly confident that we've going to get somewhere between 40 and 45kN.

"With the hybrid rocket we'd have to take the motor out and put it back in, where the mono-propellant engine means we only have to refuel at the end of each run - and that's not from the hot end of the car.

"It's simple, you can turn it on and off, we can run it as many times as we like and it piggy-backs on to a development programme at Nammo."

The team is aiming at runway tests for Bloodhound at St Mawgan airfield in Cornwall next July before going to its specially prepared 11.8-mile track on Hakskeen Pan in the north of South Africa in early October.

For all the latest news, advice and reviews from Telegraph Cars, sign up to our weekly newsletter by entering your email here